Try This If You Can’t Stop Working at Night

Overworking will only lead to burnout

Darius Foroux
Forge
Published in
4 min readDec 29, 2020

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Reflection on glasses of woman working late at night on computer.
Photo: AerialPerspective Images/Getty Images

Since the pandemic began, I’ve been working more than usual — especially at night. Apparently I’m not the only one.

A survey with 10,000 respondents showed that Americans devote about 35% of their “time savings” to their primary jobs. And most of us save a lot of time during a pandemic. We’re not commuting, and we’re not going out — so why do we still feel so busy?

What’s more, overworking is actually bad for our health. It’s easy to overlook the physical toll of knowledge work. Of course, it’s not comparable to manual labor, but still, too much desk work also leads to physical issues. I’ve had neck pain, back pain, dry eyes, and headaches from putting in too much work.

And I do everything to avoid those things. I lift weights, walk at least 10,000 steps a day (I recently bought a foldable treadmill that I’ve put underneath my standing desk), eat healthily, sleep eight and a half hours a night, meditate, and take breaks throughout the day. But there’s still a limit to how much I can work on an average day before I start breaking down my body.

I know I should stop, but it’s easier said than done: A study from RescueTime, a popular time-tracking app, showed that 40% of its users were working at night, after…

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Published in Forge

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Darius Foroux
Darius Foroux

Written by Darius Foroux

I write about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance. Join my free newsletter here: dariusforoux.com

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